Updated March 13, 2026, 3:45 p.m. ET
NEW YORK – It started with boxes of goodies delivered to your doorstep. Now Bark, the dog toy company, is hoping to deliver smiles via your phone’s screen and through traveling the friendly skies.
In February, Bark launched “Who’s A Good Guest” or “WAGG” for short (get it?), a video series where film journalist Josh Horowitz (MTV News, “Happy, Sad, Confused”) interviews celebrities and their pets. Dave Stangle, Bark’s vice president of brand, reveals exclusively to USA TODAY that the company has already green lit a second season of the series.
Horowitz became a dog parent during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2021. A few years later, he shot a pilot for this show in Central Park with actress Rachel Zegler.
“I knew Rachel’s dog, Lenny, was a big part of her life, and it was just like, ‘I have this idea that’s now or never,'” Horowitz recalls. “I don’t know how to get the show made, but I believe in the show idea.”
At the urging of his wife, Horowitz sent Stangle a direct message on Instagram. The journalist was already a Bark customer and hoped the company would share his vision for the show: the idea that an audience would be interested in celebrities interacting with not just any pet, but their own dog. Guests have included Dylan O’Brien, Zoey Deutch, Johnny Knoxville and Ginnifer Goodwin.
“I like an interview that goes off the rails in the best possible way,” Horowitz says before referencing a recent episode with “Jackass” star Johnny Knoxville and his dog Bucket. “If you were casting Johnny Knoxville as a dog, that is Bucket. Bucket is crazy in the best possible way.”
“The more chaotic it is, the better for us,” Stangle jokes. Episodes are around 10 minutes each. “I have two dogs at home who are different levels of chaos, and when I see that with other people, I feel like I can relate to it and that’s really how most dog people feel.”
However, Bark is attempting to remove the chaos of air travel with dogs. Bark Air launched in 2024 and has brought the company other celebrity clients and fans, including platinum-selling recording artist Josh Groban.
“Right now we work with a few different companies to take care of all the regulatory stuff to fly the planes, although they only give us flight crews and pilots who are obsessed with dogs,” Stangle explains, noting that Bark’s eventual goal is to scale up to their own fleet of planes. “And we take care of all the booking, the onboard experience.
“Even the car service has your dog’s name on the placard instead of the person’s,” Stangle continues of the VIP experience. “We serve bone broth in a champagne bottle. It’s a lot for your dog to wake up in New York and go to bed in LA. That’s a huge change in environment. We make the flight part of the experience itself.”
A one-way ticket from New York to Los Angeles, for both a dog and their human, is $6,725. The service started with service from New York to LA and London. It has since expanded to 10 additional destinations across the globe.
“We were kind of first to market on a lot of different things and saw how dog-friendly the world was getting,” Stangle says. “Now there are tons of companies, a lot of really great ones, that are coming out with awesome products, awesome experiences. The challenge is just keeping up with how much innovation there is, but frankly, that means the world is getting more dog-friendly. That’s a good thing.”
